Bush grits teeth and backs off / North Korean ship allowed to deliver missiles to Yemen

David E. Sanger, Thom Shanker, New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, December 12, 2002

2002-12-12 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- President Bush reluctantly ordered the Navy on Wednesday to release a North Korean ship bound for Yemen with 15 Scud missiles, after Yemen's president told Vice President Dick Cheney in a tense telephone call that the United States had no right to seize weapons he had legally bought, officials said.

Administration officials conceded that the release of the unmarked ship and the missiles brought an embarrassing diplomatic end to an otherwise successful military interdiction of North Korean missiles. By coincidence, it came on the day the administration sent Congress a new strategy for countering weapons of mass destruction that advocates American interdiction of weapons thought to be a threat.

The ship was stopped by two Spanish warships on Monday, and the missiles, discovered hidden beneath sacks of cement, were cataloged and secured by American explosives experts. But early Wednesday afternoon, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that "we have looked at this matter thoroughly, and there is no provision under international law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North Korea."

That decision was particularly painful to the White House, officials acknowledged privately, because U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea uses the hard currency from sales of its Scud and No Dong missiles to pay for both its missile program and its effort to develop nuclear weapons.

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The decision came after Cheney tried to persuade Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to give up delivery of the battlefield-range missiles.

Cheney then consulted with Bush, and afterward Saleh -- who also spoke on Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin Powell -- was told he could have the ship's contents. Administration officials said that Saleh had agreed to keep control of the missiles and not pass them on to either Iraq or terrorist groups.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell had received assurances from Saleh that no more Scuds will be bought from North Korea.

Cheney's involvement underscores the sensitivity of the diplomatic task. He and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have been outspoken about the need to cut off North Korea's sources of income, and both are highly critical of its sale of weapons to other countries. But administration officials acknowledged that it was impossible not to yield to Yemen's request for the missiles because of its strategic location and its cooperation in the American fight against al Qaeda.

To that end, Yemen let the CIA operate pilotless Predator drone aircraft over its territory. A Predator fired a Hellfire anti-tank missile in Yemen last month, killing six suspected al Qaeda operatives.

"I suppose we could have seized the ship for a while and delayed the delivery," one senior administration official said on Wednesday night. "But what purpose would it have served? Why anger the Yemenis if we ultimately were going to have to turn it over?"

Neither North Korea nor Yemen has signed the Missile Technology Control Regime, which seeks to limit the spread of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction. The sale of Scuds, therefore, is not illegal. But the ship's anonymity and hidden missile cargo suggest that North Korea, at least, sought to avoid discovery.

"I think most people would see this as a clear indication that there was no interest on the part of North Korea in being up front about what it was doing, " said one Pentagon official. "Why else would they have hid the cargo, filed an improper manifest and told the captain to give false stories about where he was going? North Korea was not trying to do this in an overt way."

As of Wednesday night, North Korea had no official comment on the incident.

"The administration's actions in this case were confused and contradictory, " said Robert Einhorn, who led the State Department nonproliferation efforts during the Clinton administration.

"They must have known the nature of the cargo and the destination from the beginning," he said. "They should have determined at the outset whether they were ready to see it through. Now, having reversed themselves, how can they go to other countries and try to discourage them from purchasing North Korean missiles?"